Tuesday, December 08, 2015

Oleg

From a search for the name "oleg."

Oleg (Russian: Олег), Oleh (Ukrainian: Олег), or Aleh (Belarusian: Алег) is a Slavic given name. It derives from the Old Norse Helgi (Helge), meaning "holy", "sacred", or "blessed". The feminine equivalent is Olga.

Pronunciation
The usual pronunciation of Oleg in English is based on the transliteration of the Cyrillic alphabet, and hides three combined quirks of spoken (as opposed to written) Russian:

  1. The stress is on the second syllable. In spoken Russian, the initial short unstressed 'O' is pronounced 'A' as in 'about', like 'Al-ég': however...
  2. Written Russian 'e' is pronounced 'ye' as in 'yeti', like 'Al-yég': however...
  3. A written final 'г' (hard g as in 'gun') is pronounced 'k', with the correct result 'Al-yék'.
Thus, rather than the typically mangled anglophone mess of 'Oh-leg', the proper pronunciation of Oleg in English most closely resembles the name Alec.

Alyek.  Hence: Aleshka

At morning Mass I pray for "Oleg and  his Companions" so that none of the other lads there are left out.

Leo, put this on the kitchen blackboard in hot pink for your Russian lesson.